Selling Out

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As I’ve said before, highly bankable intellectual property starts with a built-in base of guaranteed sales. J.K. Rowling’s kid wizard-based books are about as bankable a piece of IP as there is, so when a show (sorta, kinda) based on the books, or at least the characters and settings in the books, appears in a couple years, it will open strong.After the guaranteed wave of initial sales burns off, it will either have spawned good word of mouth and...

You might have missed my little summary of the crazy box office Broadway had over the holidays. Unbelievable numbers across a range of shows. This article has a little bit more about it.One little interesting tidbit that wasn’t in the first piece, though, was that Wicked has the ability to flex based on demand. Here’s the quote:“In the case of 'Wicked,'” recent renovations to the Gershwin Theater, where the show is playing, opened up 119 seats in the rear...

I’ve noticed a number of writers and observers falling prey to the understandable but wrong fallacy of seeing live and broadcast versions of the same event as competitive to each other.Most recently, Miami Attorney and sports blogger Darren Heitner pitches the relationship between live and broadcast sports as “the biggest rivalry of 2014.” He sees a tug of war between the watching of sports on TV and attending it in person. On the surface, it makes sense, in that...

I love this: London’s New Year’s Eve fireworks show this year was aimed at all five senses.When I was in first grade, the teacher brought in a little popcorn maker to explain the five senses to us: We could see the popcorn pop; we could hear the kernels explode; we could smell the delicious, buttery smell as it heated up; we could feel the bumpy kernels when they finished popping; and, of course, we could taste the popcorn when...

My read on adding KISS to the Dodger Stadium date of the Stadium Series is not that the NHL is trying to use KISS to sell more tickets. In fact, this game is selling out already. It’s the other way around: KISS, run by consummate self-promoter Gene Simmons, sees this as a platform to promote KISS and its various activities, including the launch of its arena football team, LA KISS. (I did mention the self-promotion thing, right?)The Winter Classic...